


The Guy on the Radio

by matchstick_milk



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Bickering, Canon Compliant, Crushes, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Goes between, Losers club - Freeform, M/M, Mentions or Short Appearances of the other Losers, Non-Linear Narrative, Radio DJ Richie, Teen Losers and Adult Losers, Underage Drinking, i haven't read the book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 03:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20828381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchstick_milk/pseuds/matchstick_milk
Summary: Richie’s never been in love before. Eddie’s the first one, Eddie’s it.





	The Guy on the Radio

**Author's Note:**

> i'm dying to know what happened with everyone when they're a bit older as teens, before they leave derry, but haven't read the book bc it's a whopper. had this kicking around in my head for a bit and who doesn't love some braided narratives am i right lmao
> 
> edit: my sister who is reading it says they dont graduate together, but im ignoring that ;) so they can have many years oF FUN TOGETHER.

Richie Tozier never meant to get into radio. 

It was just a means to an end, a way to pay the bills that wasn’t slinging hash on some souped-up grill and spilling grease down his shirtfront every night. He started low, like most people do—cataloging, running news bites from the cramped and smoky writer’s room, siphoning the calls that weren’t from absolute psychos trying to get their two-cents on the radio—but he had personality. 

That’s whatever everyone always said, right? _ Richie Tozier, you’ve sure got some personality _.

Usually it wasn’t really meant to be a compliment, but, hey, whatever; if _ personality _ got him out of food service and into a slot running the graveyard shift at KLAD, entertaining the masses with his jokes and one-sided adequate taste in music, well, then that worked just fine for him. 

And if he ended up liking radio, liking that graveyard shift, liking the weirdos who called from phone booths and bars to requests all sorts of tunes to soothe their heartbreak—that was just extra.

So every day, Richie wakes up at the crack-ass of three in the afternoon, a nocturnal animal by trade, and grabs dinner for the road and doesn’t think about the past. The past is dull, uninteresting: _ I grew up in Derry, Maine, a pit stop to bigger places, a strip of crumbling buildings and too many creeks _. 

But things creep up; things that feel like memories—like they’re too real and vivid and meaningful to be dreams—but never breach the veneer of, _ No, that’s not right _ . Bits of emotion are brushed away, things he doesn’t really give pause to investigate, to understand: why New Kids On The Block makes him laugh a little; why when he hears _ In the Still of the Night _ requested he feels a little hollower; why he feels the looming presence of something—a cloud hanging in the cloudless night sky—when he passes the keys to the next jockey and shuffles home before the sun can rise.

—

“It’s dogshit.”

“Shut up, asshole,” Eddie snaps, pushing up on his arms. His bed—old by now, still built for a kid half his size—squeaks under the pressure as Eddie glares down at Richie, who’s spread across the dusty wooden floor. “It’s not dogshit, okay? It’s good.”

“I guess,” Richie says, rolling onto his back. “If you like this sort of dogshit.”

Eddie makes an annoyed noise and fingers the edge of his empty cassette.

Truth be told, it’s not that bad, but Richie doesn’t say so. It’s safer to pick at Eddie’s taste in music rather than say how much he likes it, especially when they’re like this: hanging out, just the two of them. They do that sometimes. It’s never because they want to, specifically, but because Bill will be busy with English homework, and Ben’s busy with college essays or whatever the hell he does, and Mike’s stuck at the family slaughterhouse, and Stan’s wasting his youth helping his dad with the temple every other afternoon—and that just leaves them. 

Richie’s got no hard plans, no college he’s tripping over himself to get to. Richie thinks Eddie’s got a future, because he’s bright, but he sticks around home sometimes because it’s easier than arguing curfews with his mom—nevermind asking to borrow her car; he tried that once and it resulted in a two-hour lecture about car accidents, hydroplaning, explosive engines, flats, hitchhikers, so he never tried asking again. 

When its the two of them, they usually just walk around and talk about nothing, pick fun, make jokes about each other’s mothers. Sometimes Richie even gets Eddie to cave and follow him to the arcade, where they spend hours playing games they’re probably too old for, sixteen and gangly. They trade insults, trade quarters for time spent nudging each other with their shoulders, and Richie pretends the contact doesn’t make him want to puke a little, in a good way; like when Eddie finally wins a round because Richie lets him have one (a mercy, because when you log as many hours as he as on _ Street Fighter _, you don’t lose to losers like Eddie Kaspbrak), Eddie’s smile doesn’t twist around the deepest, sweetest part of him. 

It’s the usual fare; the safe fare; the kind of stuff Richie can live with.

But then sometimes it’s like this, when they spend quiet afternoons alone, waiting for Ms. Kaspbrak to kick Richie out. When they listen to music that reminds Richie too much of Eddie when he hears them later on the radio. When they lay close, but far, Eddie on his bed and Richie on the floor, and Richie steals every look he can get. 

“Whatever,” Eddie says, eyes shutting. His arm hangs off the edge of the bed, dangling above Richie’s nose, close enough to reach out and touch. “You don’t have to listen, you know. You can just leave.”

He says it relaxed, only mildly ticked off, which means he really isn’t annoyed at all.

Richie watches the sun catch his friend’s wrist, the scar on his palm. 

He thinks of Pennywise—maybe dead, maybe not—and his taunting, _ I know you’re secret _. Feels it under his feet, like how you feel the air when the floor drops out from under you, despite being safe, two-stories up. 

“Wish I could, Eds,” he says, shutting his eyes, too. “But I’ve got a hot date with your mom later.”

—

Fear is funny, like memory is funny.

One is sharp, one is fuzzed, but the closer Richie gets to Derry, the more they seem to occupy space in his body, his mind. It’s a long flight and an even longer drive in a rental, delivering him finally to Jade of the Orient, but nostalgia sweeps over him, hard as a tumbling wave. Every turn, a memory. Every storefront, a reminder. Every face….

Bev looks great. Ben looks unfairly great. Bill, fine. Mike, fine. And Eddie—it all comes rushing back, a feeling he never remembered feeling in the first place. It’s like all those almost-memories stacked on top of one another. It feels innocent; a crush, a first love, a pair of initials carved in secret. It makes him wonder how he could ever forgotten Eddie in the first place.

They sit and they order, they chat about life since graduating, since up and leaving Derry. They talk about _ forgetting _ Derry, and remembering it again, an ebbing tide. They talk, quieter, about the fear. 

“When, uh, Mike called me,” Richie says, grinning, glancing, “I threw up.”

Eddie doesn’t miss a step. “When he called me, I crashed my car.”

It’s sheepish at first, until they realize it’s mutual, until Bill stutters for the first time in years and they realize that getting a phone call from a Derry phone number was like a spark, reigniting an old sort of terror, like being a kid again.

Richie remembers the unsteadiness, feels it again as Mike tells them, “Fear. It’s fear.”

—

Richie’s never been in love before. 

Eddie’s the first one, Eddie’s it. Richie’s been alive seventeen years, which isn’t many, and he’s never left Derry except to visit family in Bangor, but he isn’t totally clueless. Eddie makes him feel like every stupid song on the radio says, like how Bill felt for Beverly before she went to live with her aunt, like how he’s sure Ben _ still _ feels, shipping poetic postcards to Portland every month like clockwork.

Eddie, however, is kind of clueless, which is just how Richie like it. If Eddie was observant, he’d have to explain a lot of things away, like why they still tease each other like they’re ten years old. He’d have to explain—well, shit like this:

“God, this place gives me the creeps,” Eddie says.

Their shoes pad against the wooden planks of the kissing bridge. 

“What, like you still believe in cooties and shit?” Richie asks, hands in his pockets. “It’s just a kissing bridge.”

“I know that?” Eddie huffs, bouncing his weight a little as they step into the covered bridge. “But look at this. When was the last time this thing was inspected, you think? Huh? Probably fucking never. These beams could collapse whenever—”

“And then you’d fall two feet into, like, three inches of water. Oh no!” Richie laughs, gripping at the front of his jeans. “Dude, my dick’s longer than the fall.”

“Yeah, not by that much, Rich,” Eddie snaps back, shaking his head.

They come out on the other side, and the trees rustled overhead. The bridge is a pretty average spot in the daytime, and begrudgingly romantic in the twilight, all blue and hazy like it gets when summer’s leaking in. Golden hour’s gone; in maybe fifteen minutes, it’ll be totally dark. They’re seniors and graduating soon. Tonight, the other seniors were feeling temporarily sentimental enough to invite all the unpopular kids to their end-of-the-year bash, too, and Richie and Eddie are going together.

_ Well, no _ , Richie thinks, _ not _ going together _ . Just walking there together _. 

Richie’s eyes flicker along the railings of the bridge, into the hundreds of names carved there. 

“You know, you’ve never seen it,” Richie says. “Unlike your mom. Oooh.”

He reaches out for a high-five—partially because it was a good one, but mostly because he can’t risk the slight chance that this time, Eddie won’t be oblivious; that Eddie might see the old carving, _ R + E _ framed by a crude heart, and put two and two together.

Eddie thankfully remains clueless, shoves his hand away, and says, “Shut the fuck up, Richie.”

—

Greta Keene is Derry-rich, which really just means she lives in a house close to downtown and _ not _ an apartment, and is a total snob because of it.

Richie has so-far happily and successfully been able to avoid running into her for a majority of the party, hanging back with the other Losers and only making a fool of himself when he needs to venture away—to get a beer from the tub of ice in her kitchen or back porch, to hit the bathroom, to steal a lighter from the counter to light the cigarettes they pass around. 

He doesn’t feel one way or the other about cigarettes; it was always sort of Bev’s thing. Her school lets out a week before theirs does, so she’s there, ignoring the catty looks from the girls who barely remember bullying her. She laughs as they cough and pass a cigarette around, chatting about graduation, about the future, about the impending days of summer where they’ll slowly filter away from Derry and out of each other’s lives: Bill to England for school, Bev to her aunt’s and then Chicago, Stan to Atlanta, Ben to Nebraska, Mike forever stuck in Derry, Eddie to New York, himself to Los Angeles. 

He doesn’t like to think too deeply about that last part. Instead he focuses on holding the smoke in his mouth long enough to pretend he’s really _ smoking _ before blowing it out and passing it to Eddie.

Eddie doesn’t use that technique. He just breathes it in like he’s a detective in a noir movie and coughs hard until his eyes are turning pink. They laugh at his expense. Richie pats his back, looking for an excuse to make contact. He’s a little drunk, so he lets his hand linger, just a little.

“Go ahead and smoke another one, Eds,” Richie says. “I’m sure your baby lungs are loving this.”

“Shut up, Richie, I told you not to call me that.”

Bev laughs behind her hand, bright and loud. Bill and Ben melt.

“What’d you think?” she asks, brow raising. “It’s not the same as using an inhaler, y’know.”

“Yeah,” Richie laughs. “Sucking on that thing never did you any good, man.”

“That’s not what your mom said last night.”

Richie lets himself get shoved in the shoulder, laughing. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Yes, it does, dipshit,” Eddie argues, before they’re launching into a bickering the group has gotten good at filtering out by now, white noise; _ old married couple shit _, Stan calls it. 

Eventually, though, Greta finds them. She doesn’t look thrilled by the idea, but when she stands over their little caravan on the floor in the living room and tells them, “We need bodies for Truth or Dare. You in, losers?” it’s because she’s desperate; most of the other partygoers are too too fucked up and occupied to be wrangled into a dumb party game.

Richie feels his heart go out; just straight-up it dies for a second, before restarting, a vibrating that’s got him feeling on edge. When he smiles at Greta, it’s tight and totally fake, but she’s too dumb to tell the difference.

“Sure,” Bev says, standing. The skirt of her dress flicks out a bit as she turns back to the boys, all charming and shit. “Why not, right?”

_ Why not _ , Richie thinks, laughing and saying something stupid. _ Yeah, why not. I’m just gonna shit myself, but why not, right? _

Between the living room and Greta’s family’s fancy study, Richie polishes off a fresh bottle of beer. They sit cross-legged in a cramped circle on the carpet, and he’s stuck between Stan and Eddie, the latter too close. He smells like toothpaste and his mom’s god-awful lavender potpourri. 

Greta puts the needle on a record to set the mood. Some denim-clad asshole puts an empty bottle on the wood between them all. Stan leans into his side and mutters, “Is this Truth or Dare? Or Spin the Bottle?”

Richie shrugs and says nothing for the first time in—well, ever.

It’s pretty standard, the usual line of questions and dares made to stir up a little drama: who do you like? Who in this room do you want to kiss? Have you ever done it? What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done? Have you ever stolen something? I dare you to shotgun a beer. I dare you to kiss Rebecca. I dare you to streak. I dare you to slap someone. 

He’s avoided this game like the plague, but there’s a lot of people to get to, and he’s good at keeping things benign. He’s the class asshole—he resents the idea of _ Class Clown _ after everything they’ve been though—so when he picks dare, they just make him take a heated purple-nurple from some jock before it’s Eddie’s turn. 

Eddie’s a weenie, so Richie expects him to go with a truth. 

“Dare,” Eddie says, and they tell him to shotgun a fresh beer.

Eddie’s ease wavers and he looks down at the one beer he’s been guilty, safely nursing for the past two hours. He can recite all the signs and symptoms of alcohol poisoning, so Richie knows he isn’t too into the idea, but he also isn’t a coward. Eddie drinks the whole thing and when he’s done, he wipes his dribbling, beer-soaked chin on his sleeve. They keep going round the circle, and, slowly, his eyes get a little glasier, his laughter a little looser.

—

Richie watches the Neibolt House collapse in on itself. 

It’s all wood and rubble and celebration—or, at least, that’s how it’s supposed to feel. Losing Stan was hard, but leaving Eddie behind is something else, a deeper cut because it wasn’t Eddie’s choice. He pictures it a hundred times, wading through the lake he remembered being so much deeper: the boards snapping, the windows shattering, the beams crunching, sucking itself towards it’s gravity. When it goes, it takes Eddie, too. 

When the Losers take him to the quarry and wash the blood and sweat and dirt from their skin in its crystal-clear waters, they smile. The feel light, and that’s great, but this time, Richie can’t fake it.

—

“You’re drunk.”

“Shut up, Richie. Seriously.” Eddie blinks blearily at nothing as he sits mostly upright. “Just shut up.”

“I’m just saying.” Richie shrugs and cranes his neck to get a better look out the window, but it’s useless. “God, how long are they gonna be out there?”

After shotgunning that beer, Eddie’s state of sobriety tumbled quick. He took drinks with bravado; alcohol, it seemed, was wonderfully counteractive to his hypochondria. But that meant walking all the way back home would be a chore, so, as the Losers split up, Richie took Eddie as his ward and found them a ride with a girl named Cassie and her ugly boyfriend. It was supposed to be simple, but most things never were. 

Cassie and her beaux parked their car just shy of the kissing bridge, left Richie and Eddie tucked in the backseat, and were doing—well, whatever shit couples on a kissing bridge did. Kissing, Richie figured.

“What’s wrong?” Eddie asks, grinning to himself. Richie looked at him, at his soft features touched by the faint glow of the radio. “Got a hot date you’re afraid to miss?”

“Yeah, right,” Richie huffs, pushing Eddie’s hair down, soft tufts of brown obscuring his vision. “No, my hot date’s right here, actually, stuck in this stupid car with me.”

Eddie bats him off. “You’re supposed to say something about my mom, asshole.”

They both laugh, pretty drunk and feeling—well, feeling good. Richie’s not even thinking about leaving his hometown and his best friends behind. He’s definitely not thinking about—

“You ever come out here?” Eddie asks suddenly.

“What?” Richie asks, grinning. “Like to the bridge?”

“Mmhm.”

“Nah,” he lies. “Not really.”

“You’ve kissed a girl before, though.” Eddie makes a face, like he’s trying real hard to remember. “Or was that Bill…?”

“That was Bill.” Richie skips the joke again, because it's Eddie, and sometimes he’s allowed to be serious with Eddie. He doesn’t have to perform if he doesn’t want to. “I haven’t.”

“Kissed anyone?” Eddie asks, sounding very interested before he’s laughing his ass off.

“What?” Richie laughs a little because Eddie’s laughing. The rest of him burns, though, embarrassed for so many reasons. “Like you have, Ass-pbrak?”

“No,” Eddie laughs, groaning. “Oh my God, my mom’s gonna kill me if I show up like this.”

“We’ll sneak you in, Eds. It’s not big deal. Your mom loves me—”

“She hates you—”

“She _ loves me _,” Richie interjects. He loses his voice, though, the second he feels the weight on his shoulder, Eddie’s head resting against it. 

Richie half expects that Eddie’s fallen asleep until he says, quietly, “I’ve never kissed anyone.”

It’s dangerous territory. They’re both a little drunk, a little stupid, and there are people around. They’re not even drunk enough that they both might forget about it, but they _ are _ best friends. Richie’s told Eddie too many secrets—that he wanted to be the world’s best ventriloquist, that he stole cigarettes from his mom, that he still has nightmares about his own missing person’s poster—but not this one. _ Never _ this one. 

Eddie lifts his head off of Richie’s shoulder and looks at him.

The radio is soft, a white-noise in the car. 

“Well, gee, Eds,” Richie says, trying but missing for a laugh. He adjusts his glasses, definitely nervous. “I’d help you out, but you’d have to take a number.”

It’s supposed to be a joke. Really, it is. It’s supposed to ease the tension, but then Eddie looks at his lips and looks like he’s _ thinking about it _, and that just kicks the tension up way beyond anything Richie’s ever experienced. No day listening to cassettes could ever hold a candle, especially not when Eddie looks at Richie’s eyes again and says, “Well, we could just do it quick, Rich.”

Alarms are going off. Pennywise is floating down off a lumberjack’s shoulders on a string of balloons, singsonging that he knows about the worst part of Richie. 

“Well—”

“We’re friends, right?” Eddie asks, quietly.

Their hands are brushing on the seat, just the fingertips. It’s electric. 

“Yeah, Eds” Richie finally says, nodding disjointedly. “We’re friends….”

That’s when Eddie Kaspbrak kissed him.

It’s nervous; they’re both nervous, and the nerves make Richie wonder how drunk Eddie really is. It’s a slow slot that’s got him shaking, because maybe this is just a one-off for Edde, but for him it’s the one thing he’s been thinking about for literally _ years _ . He’s carved their intials into a fucking _ bridge _ over the idea of this. His mind tunes into the song, because he wants to remember what he has his first kiss to: _In the Still of the Night_. It’s lame and cheesy and do-wop-y. It makes his heart feel, like, five times too big.

They break apart just long enough—a few good seconds—for it to make sense to stop; they've kissed, it's done and over—but then Eddie’s lips part and he has the audacity to touch Richie’s cheek, to draw him in a deeper for another kiss like he’s actually enjoying this. Richie barely moves at all, ramrod as he lets himself tilt into it. It's thrilling; fuck killing an ancient clown—this is the single most exciting thing to ever happen to Richie Tozier in his life. Kissing Eddie feels like jumping into the quarry for the first time, like having the floor fall out from under you.

As soon as he thinks about touching Eddie back, though, he hears voices. They’re coming closer—Cassie and her boyfriend, laughing about whatever they’ve just done—and it’s enough of a warning for them to break apart, the sound soft. 

Eddie stares up at Richie and cracks a grin. “Is the car spinning?”

“No, dumbass.” Richie nudges his glasses up his nose and lets Eddie rest his head back against his shoulder; smiles. “You’re just drunk… and cute.”

He shoots it in there because it’s not the first time he’s ever called Eddie cute, but it might be the last. Eddie seems quietly pleased. When Cassie comes back in, dress straps disheveled, they get back on track. 

“My mom’s gonna kill me,” Eddie mutters. “Ugh….”

Nobody notices their fingers are still touching, except Richie, who thinks he’ll never forget about it.

“Don’t worry, Eds,” Richie says, thinking this will be enough.“You can stay at my place.”

—

Richie goes back to Los Angeles when everything’s finished, when it is killed forever. Unfortunately, he does have a job to get back to. When he goes, though, this time it’s with his memories in tact, and a strange feeling, a silence he’d never noticed the first time. 

When he rolls into the night shift, everything feels fresh in his mind. 

“Alright, you’re on with Trash Mouth here at KLAD for the graveyard shift, my friend. What’s your request?” Richie says into the microphone, alone in his booth.

“Uh, yeah, it’s kind of an oldie,” the stranger says, sounding tired. “But for my girl out there, I know she’s listening, can you play _ In the Still of the Night _?”

He doesn’t know if he’ll forget everything like the last time, later, when the old feelings start to fade again. He hopes he doesn’t. He likes having those memories, he likes keeping them close. 

“That,” he says, the hollow feeling not-so-hollow anymore, “I can absolutely do.” 

Richie looks at his hand and sees that it’s no longer scarred, and misses that, too, in a strange way, but takes solace in knowing that there’s another scar in the world, on a tiny bridge somewhere in Derry, Maine that’s got his and Eddie’s names on it, and that that shit is forever.


End file.
